CV NEWS FEED // Leaders and lawmakers in several blue states have criticized President Joe Biden over the ongoing crisis at the nation’s southern border, which has caused many illegal immigrants to flock north.
FOX News reported Tuesday that “New York City Mayor Eric Adams has criticized the Biden administration in no uncertain terms, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has leaned on the president to do more for months. Other deep blue cities like Chicago and Boston are also buckling under the weight of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s bussing program.”
In mid-August, Adams went as far as to slam the Biden administration for denying 100,000 illegal immigrants in New York City what he termed the “right” to seek legal employment. He said at the time:
What is more anti-American than not allowing someone to work? What is more anti-American than that? So what is wrong with them having the right to work? There’s no reason the national government is not staying true to the basic principle of the American experience to allow you to the right to work. It is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable that they cannot work.
About a week later, Hochul implored Biden to give New York’s migrants “a historic humanitarian response.”
“What we’ve said all along is just let them work and help us out financially,” she added, agreeing with the mayor of her state’s largest city. The governor lobbied the administration for “expedited work authorization, so we can get these people out of shelters and into the jobs. Financial support, federal housing vouchers, schools, health care, legal services, case and shelter for us to provide to these asylum seekers.”
Giant corporations with offices in New York City issued an open letter to the president agreeing with Hochul and Adams. FOX noted that the letter’s “signees included top executives from JPMorgan, BlackRock, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and dozens of other major companies.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, who is usually a staunch Biden ally, wondered why the Biden administration’s response on the matter had been virtually nonexistent. “I wrote to him in May so it’s been like four months, but I hope to find out,” he told Axios this week.
Also last month, Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey penned a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, writing that she declared “a state of emergency due to rapid and unabating increases in the number of families with children and pregnant people (sic) – many of them newly arriving migrants and refugees – living within the state but without the means to secure safe shelter in our communities.”
Like Adams, Hochul, and Durbin, she similarly criticized the Biden administration for its lack of response.
To our partners in the federal government, Massachusetts has stepped up to address what sadly has been a federal crisis of inaction that is many years in the making. But we can no longer do this alone. We need federal partnership, federal funding, and urgent federal action to meet this moment and to continue to serve some of our most vulnerable families.
The New York Post reported Sunday that Healey “mobilized 250 members of the Massachusetts National Guard on Thursday to help transport the latest wave of asylum seekers to shelters across the state.”
“But much like the crisis overtaking the Big Apple, Massachusetts has nowhere near enough housing or resources currently available to accommodate the influx.”
“I honestly thought shipping illegals to the blue state libs would be a useless PR stunt,” said one user of X (formerly known as Twitter) in a now-viral post. “It’s turned out to be an absolute master stroke in political strategy. Amazing to watch.”
The sharp increase in migrants in liberal states far from the border, such as New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts, has largely been the result of an effort spearheaded by a pair of Republican governors: Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida.
In April 2022, Abbott began chartering buses to send illegal immigrants who had arrived in Texas to blue states and cities, where local officials have traditionally supported lax immigration policies.
Reflecting on the policy a year later, Abbott said, “Texas’ small border towns remain overwhelmed and overrun by the thousands of people illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico because of President Biden’s refusal to secure the border.”
In September 2022, DeSantis sent two planes of immigrants from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard, MA, a popular vacation spot for many Democratic politicians, such as former President Barack Obama.
Striking a similar tone to Abbott’s, the Florida governor’s then-communications director said:
States like Massachusetts, New York and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration through their designation as “sanctuary states” and support for the Biden administration’s open border policies.
